sits have been observed, and everywhere they
bear the same testimony to a profuse and varied creation. The earth was
teeming then with life as now; and in whatever corner of its surface the
geologist finds the old strata, they hold a dead fauna as numerous as
that which lives and moves above it. Nor do we find that there was any
gradual increase or decrease of any organic forms at the beginning and
close of the successive periods. On the contrary, the opening scenes of
every chapter in the world's history have been crowded with life, and
its last leaves as full and varied as its first.

VOICES

From 'Methods of Study in Natural History'

There is a chapter in the Natural History of animals that has hardly
been touched upon as yet, and that will be especially interesting with
reference to families. The voices of animals have a family character not
to be mistaken. All the _Canidae_ bark and howl!--the fox, the wolf,
the dog, have the same kind of utterance, though on a somewhat different
pitch. All the bears growl, from the white bear of the Arctic snows to
the small black bear of the Andes. All the cats meow, from our quiet
fireside companion to the lions and tigers and panthers of the forests
and jungle. This last may seem a strange assertion; but to any one who
has listened critically to their sounds and analyzed their voices, the
roar of the lion is but a gigantic meow, bearing about the same
proportion to that of a cat as its stately and majestic form does to the
smaller, softer, more peaceful aspect of the cat. Yet notwithstanding
the difference in their size, who can look at the lion, whether in his
more sleepy mood, as he lies curled up in the corner of his cage, or in
his fiercer moments of hunger or of rage, without being reminded of a
cat? And this is not merely the resemblance of one carnivorous animal to
another; for no one was ever reminded of a dog or wolf by a lion.

Again, all the horses and donkeys neigh; for the bray of a donkey is
only a harsher neigh, pitched on a different key, it is true, but a
sound of the same character--as the donkey himself is but a clumsy and
dwarfish horse. All the cows low, from the buffalo roaming the prairie,
the musk-ox of the Arctic ice-fields, or the yak of Asia, to the cattle
feeding in our pastures.

Among the birds, this similarity of voice in families is still more
marked. We need only recall the harsh and noisy parrots, so similar in
their peculiar utterance.